Na Kampě & the Devil's Stream
Why is it significant?
Come down the steps from Charles Bridge and stop at the bottom. In front of you opens Na Kampě, a long, irregular square of pastel houses, old trees and cobbles, with the bridge's great stone arches striding over the rooftops behind you.
Key Facts
| Place | Na Kampě & the Devil's Stream |
|---|---|
| Address | Na Kampě, 118 00 Praha 1, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.08570, 14.40880 |
| Part of Walk | Prague's Secret Lesser Town: Kampa, the Devil's Stream & the Embassy Garden of 1989 |
| Generated | Generated |
Come down the steps from Charles Bridge and stop at the bottom. In front of you opens Na Kampě, a long, irregular square of pastel houses, old trees and cobbles, with the bridge's great stone arches striding over the rooftops behind you. The crowd on the bridge is a few metres above your head... and down here, half of them never notice this place exists.
Kampa is an island, though it hardly feels like one. On one side is the Vltava. On the other runs a narrow channel, the Čertovka, the Devil's Stream, dug in the Middle Ages as a millrace to drive the mills of Malá Strana. Walk to the edge of the square and look over: houses rise straight out of the water, with tiny balconies and wooden doors at water level, which is why guidebooks love to call this Prague's little Venice.
And why the Devil? Prague's favourite explanation has nothing to do with Satan. Legend says that in a house nearby lived a woman with such a ferocious temper that the neighbours called her the she-devil... and the stream was named after her. There are other theories, but none of them is as satisfying.
The island has paid for its beauty. It sits low, right in the river, and in August 2002 the great Vltava flood put Kampa under water, filling cellars and ground floors and forcing everyone out. Look for the marks on the walls showing how high the water rose in different floods over the centuries. Kampa has been rebuilt, dried out and repainted many times, and it always comes back.
One more neighbour deserves a mention. In a villa just south of this square lived the actor and writer Jan Werich, one of the best-loved Czech comedians of the twentieth century, for decades until his death in 1980. Walk south now along the square and into the park, towards an old mill building on the riverbank... and watch out for some very large babies.